They use speed boats, automatic weapons and satellite technology to create a wave of terror on the high seas. The pirates of the Nineties are far deadlier than the heroes of the past.

Nick Ryan discovers the modern day pirates who rule the high seas.

The Sea Wolves

"Give us $2000 before we go."

"I don't have any money." 'The General of the
Somali Coastguard cocked his pistol and pointed it at my head.'

"Captain," he said, "no ship travels without
money. Do you really want to lose your life just as I am about to set your ship
free?"

'We went down to the cabin where they rummaged through all
the drawers and took whatever money and other things they could find. Then they left.'

These are not the opening lines of a new work of fiction.
They are quotes from the statement of the Master of the 'M.V.Bonsella', whose vessel was
hijacked by 26 Somali pirates in September 1994, off the north-eastern tip of Somalia.

And they bring to a close his account of a hijack which
lasted over five days, during which time the 'Bonsella' was used in several unsuccessful
attempts to board other vessels in the area. When these failed because the ship was too
slow, its cargo of first aid medicine was taken along with everything else that could be
stripped.

The pirates attacked the 'Bonsella' from a dhow (wooden
fishing vessel) which the Master had allowed to come too close. After firing two mortar
rounds, 11 heavily-armed men leapt aboard and identified themselves as Somali Coast
Guards. They took charge of the vessel and held the crew for a terrifying five days as
they hunted other ships.

Nearly a century after Joseph Conrad wrote of the colourful
robbers he called "vagabonds of the sea", piracy is still rife. Many ships
already travel in convoy throughout the high seas and with piracy incidents growing, this
trend looks set to increase.

After a three year lull, reported incidents effectively
doubled last year to 224. And to date for the first six months of this year, there have
been nearly 80 serious attacks. A worrying trend is that the number of violent incidents
seems to be increasing, but from fewer attacks - so that pirates may be using violence
more frequently. And monitoring agencies have also found widespread under-reporting - so
that the true scale of the situation may be much larger than we know.

Areas of concern include
the South China Seas, West Africa, South America (particularly the ports of Brazil), the
coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, The Philippines, Indonesia, Somalia and, with the chaos
in Albania, even parts of the Mediterranean. Over 200 crew have been assaulted, taken
hostage or injured in attacks this year, and eight killed. The figures also show that
pirates are more likely to be armed with guns than in previous years - in 21 incidents
during the first half of 1997, compared with 16 in the same period last year.

Unlike Conrad's day, today's pirate is decidedly hi-tech,
carrying automatic weapons instead of 'bolo' knives and travelling in speedboats instead
of a 'praus' (a narrow Malayan outrigger). Violence, however, is as swift and cruel as
ever and the pirates' methods are increasingly brutal.

The latest victim was the Master of a Singapore-flagged
vessel, the cargo ship 'Sinfa'. On route from Singapore to Indonesia, it was boarded by
pirates at three thirty AM on 30 May, who shot and injured the third officer. They then
bound and gagged the Master before shooting him in the head. Now the Indonesian
authorities are demanding money for the return of the ship to its owners.

On 26 February last year, a 10-crew fishing vessel, the
'Normina', was approached by two speedboats whilst fishing in the waters off the southern
Philippines. As the boats drew alongside, the occupants suddenly brandished automatic
weapons and opened fire. In less than a minute, the gunmen killed nine of the unarmed
crew. The tenth, Jangay Ajinohon, 50, was wounded in the back of the head but managed to
leap overboard and swim away while the pirates busied themselves attaching lines from the
vessel to tow her. The 'Nomina' has not been seen since.

Such actions prompted the International Maritime
Organisation (IMO) to issue an official 'piracy warning' last year and led it to urge
national governments to intensify their efforts against piracy. This year, it issued a
statement which said: "The Committee expressed deep concern for the continuing
increase in acts of piracy and armed robbery against ships which, on the basis of
statistics kept by the Organisation, had deteriorated recently...the phenomenon appears to
have an endemic character."

In May this year, two British tourists were robbed at
gunpoint by a gang of Albanian pirates as they sailed off the coast of Corfu. Four
bandits, armed with assault rifles and grenades, stopped the Welsh couple in mid-sea
before stripping them and their rented yacht of valuables.

Witnesses said Ian Haxter and his girlfriend Sally Forest
emerged from the ordeal looking terrified. The couple, in their 30s, have been too upset
to comment on the incident but told the head of the Greek island's coastguard that they
had been held for several hours by the gang. Neither was hurt.

Since a host of fraudulent pyramid schemes triggered the
collapse of law and order in Albania last year, bands of armed mafiosi have taken to
plundering Greek ports. The anarchic state lies less than two miles from Corfu's
north-eastern tip, taking the pirates just 20 minutes to reach it in speedboats. There
have been a spate of fatal shoot-outs between the pirates and Greek coastguard this year
and officials say the pirates are emboldened by their almost endless supply of weapons.
There are 5,000 Britons living in Corfu.

In Somalia, the Somali Salvation Democratic Front
(SSDF) has denied that its men took part in an attack on a refugee ship in the Red Sea in
May last year, leaving more than 30 people dead and another 100 missing (presumed dead or
taken as slaves).

When Chinese workers boarded the hijacked Australian
freighter 'Erria Inge' two years ago, to cut it up for scrap, they smelt something foul.
Searching for its source, they found the remains of 10 men in a long-unused refrigerator.
They had been splashed with petrol and burned to death. The killings, the men's identities
and why their bodies were left aboard remain a mystery. All except they were white.

In larger scale incidents, the Cypriot-flagged cargo ship
'South Country' was boarded by over 20 pirates armed with machine guns off the coast of
Guinea on 2 April this year. A fierce fight ensued between the boarders and crew members,
during which the pirates opened up with their machine guns. The Master managed to weigh
anchor and steam out to open sea at full speed, before the pirates were able to get a toe
hold aboard the vessel.

In another large scale incident, the 'M.V. Anna Sierra' was
attacked by 30 heavily armed masked men on 13 September 1995, whilst travelling from Koh
Sichang to Manila. Cabin doors were machined gunned down when the crew refused to come
out. When they did, they were handcuffed and locked up in the engine room. Eight of them
were later taken out on deck and threatened with immediate execution by the pirates
(suspected of being Thai). When the Chief Officer was discovered hiding, his death was
only thwarted by the intervention of the ship's Greek Master - who nearly lost his finger
when the gang tried to cut off his wedding ring. Eventually the crew were put into two
dinghies and set adrift, without any documents or clothes. Luckily, they were found two
days later by Vietnamese fishermen. However, the 'Anna Sierra' and its US$4m cargo of
sugar disappeared without a trace - only to be repainted, renamed and found several months
later berthed in a Chinese port. It is still being held there today, and its cargo
offloaded by presumed rogue elements of the Chinese armed forces.

"This type of attack is simply inhumane," says
Eric Ellen, 66, who with a few dedicated staff leads an almost single-handed anti-piracy
crusade. As executive director of the Essex-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB), a
quasi-governmental organisation which is part of the International Chambers of Commerce,
Ellen wages war on all forms of maritime crime. He doesn't have actual power to tackle
pirates himself, but together with a team in Malaysia records every incident, issues
advice, liaises with police and naval authorities, and presses for tougher international
action to combat the problem. He maintains that the latest figures prove that incidents of
maritime piracy remain at a worryingly high level: "As we near the 21st century, we
cannot allow piracy of this nature to take place on our seas," he states adamantly.
"It's simply barbaric."

For Ellen, the war against piracy has been a long and
arduous one, characterised by frustration and lack of government sympathy. Settling his
tall, grey-haired frame in a leather-backed chair, Ellen peers intently through
thick-rimmed glasses and tells me: "I've spent my life working in ports, with ships
and working for the industry. I'm certainly not in it for the money. In fact, I'm regarded
as something of a maverick and was only accepted reluctantly by the insurers."

A former Chief Constable of the Port of London Police, he
laughs and admits: "It's always a lonely job but I get motivated by seeing problems
that have not been dealt with - and I want to do something about them. I really did feel
emotionally that people were out there, seamen, who weren't getting protection, and they
were getting these constant threats which they, and I, found unacceptable."

He pauses to look at the memorabilia - a lifetime's
collection of placards, flags (including a prominent skull and cross bones) and plaques -
scattered around his large, sweltering office. "I don't think anyone really
appreciates the psychological nature of a piratical attack. It's the affect of someone
coming into your home - because the ship is the seaman's home - and threatening your life
unless you hand over everything you own. A seaman takes everything he owns on board ship
with him - it may only be a few hundred dollars - but I really feel for them when they are
faced with this kind of thing."

His voice trails off into silence, before adding:
"I've known seaman who've been absolutely shattered by this experience. One captain
never went back to sea again and lost his marriage as a result of an attack. What do you
do if someone comes on board and threatens to cut off your toes and ears, or sticks a gun
in your mouth in order to get what they want?" he asks quietly. "Out there
you're on your own. If the navies of the world won't respond to your call, and many of
them are constrained from doing so, then no-one will."

The few agencies monitoring the situation, such as the IMB,
have long been warning of a problem - in sharp contrast, they believe, to the noisy but
feeble cries of shipowners (often reluctant to provide financial support). Ellen worries
the situation could deteriorate to the chaos faced in Singapore's Malacca Straits in 1992,
when there were over 200 officially reported attacks. Yet the awful nature of these
crimes, up to and including murder, don't seem to command great public or media attention.

Part of this is due to a problem in definition, which means
that official piracy statistics are much smaller than they should be (with under-reporting
prevalent anyway). The United Nations says that piracy is defined as an attack mounted for
private ends on a ship on the high seas. However, piracy almost exclusively occurs in the
territorial waters of developing countries, where poverty and corruption can be endemic.
Personal possessions, and sometimes cargo, are usually the target - in effect, these are
opportunistic "maritime muggings". Chances are that most local authorities only
pay lip service to any complaint - and few shipowners wish to lose time and money putting
a vessel into port for questioning. These all tend to mask the true extent and nature of
piracy.

"There's a tremendous amount of under-reporting,"
says Ellen. "Ship's Master's don't want to be delayed, or they're not confident of
the law enforcement in that country, or they only suffered small losses." He points
out that local authorities can often be involved in piracy as well. This has happened with
the coastguard in The Philippines and is a perennial problem in the high seas surrounding
China, where 'renegade' naval units have hijacked vessels and sold on their cargo.

For example, Chinese officials were believed to have
hijacked a freighter with a cargo of cigarettes and photographic equipment, valued at
US$2m, in June 1995. The 'Hye Mieko', a Panama-flagged freighter, left Singapore on 21
June for Cambodia's Kas Kong port, but contact was lost in waters notorious for piracy.
The Hong Kong navy was forbidden to intervene. The owner said another of his vessels, the
'Hye Prosperity', was also hijacked on 24 March 1996 with a cargo of cigarettes worth more
than US$2m. The vessel was taken under fire by 32 Chinese men.

In January 1994 the Panamanian-registered 'Alicia Star' was
stopped en route from Singapore to South Korea by what looked like an official Chinese
vessel. The ship was forced into a Chinese port and detained there for a week. Its cargo
of cigarettes and spirits, valued at US$5m, was confiscated without compensation and a
fine was demanded from its owners before it was allowed to sail back to Singapore.

There are a number of other worrying trends emerging.
Increasingly, pirates are targeting vessels in busy, crowded ports, where the emergency
response time by harbour police may take 30 minutes to an hour or more. Sometimes they use
prostitutes to distract crew members, so that an attack can take place more easily. This
happened to a container ship which moored off the coast of Thailand in March. Luckily, the
pirates were repelled.

No less ominous have been the instances where pirates have
tied up the bridge crews of large oil tankers and freighters before escaping, leaving the
ships underway without command. This creates a potential disaster situation, because the
ship might ground or collide, releasing huge amounts of oil.

The insurance industry newspaper, Lloyd's List,
maintains in a recent report that "shipping is becoming increasingly embroiled in
politically-motivated violence and civil strife, rather than straightforward piracy."
It cites the recent attacks in Albania as one example. In another, it mentions details of
terrorist attacks on merchant ships by Tamil Tiger guerrilla groups in Sri Lanka and
Muslim separatists in The Philippines.

On 7 July, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
attacked the food-carrying North Korean general cargo ship 'Mo Ran Bong', some five miles
off the Jaffna Peninsula. One crew member was killed trying to escape. Another vessel,
'Misen', was set on fire and destroyed in a separate incident.

On 29 April, members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
approached the harbour at Isabela in The Philippines in speed boats, and opened fire on
two ships with machine guns. The cargo ship 'Miguel Lujan', carrying corn and rice and the
inter-island ferry 'Leonara', loaded with passengers, were both riddled with bullets. The
attack caused panic among passengers and residents, leading to five injuries. The
attackers managed to flee to nearby islets before military reinforcements arrived.

Another problem is 'phantom' ships. And the phenomenon is
growing fast. "One time you could go to a hotel in Manila, overlooking the bay, and
simply order or buy a vessel," says Ellen. "You could get a pirate called
Captain Changco who would go out for US$350,000 and seize a ship for you. If you wanted a
crew on board they would keep them for you. If you didn't, they would simply throw them
overboard."

The stolen ships would then be given a (false) temporary
registration and sail off to Singapore or Hong Kong, where they would register again
(under a different name). From there they would take a bona fide cargo and simply
disappear, usually after radioing with engine trouble. The cargoes often ended up in
China. Though Changco was eventually caught and executed, phantom piracy is now a serious
problem in South East Asia. It has Hong Kong insurers particularly worried. There are
several ongoing investigations in this area and signs are that sophisticated Chinese crime
syndicates are behind the problem.

Pirates are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and even
have access to communications monitoring equipment. This means that if a ship sends off a
mayday call, even by satellite, the pirates can hear it and can threaten to punish the
crew. Therefore, the IMO has said that when pirates order a ship not to make any form of
transmission, ship's Masters should comply with the order.

But all this is one step
removed from an actual pirate attack. What's it like to come face to face with pirates?
One man has lived to tell the tale. He is John Flannery, a young Australian journalist.
Flannery was travelling aboard the yacht 'Longo Bardo', 20 miles off the north-eastern
coast of Somalia, when as he recalls: "I was woken by the skipper and we were just
told to get on deck. As I arrived, I was quickly told to get down. They were explosions
going on all around us. At least six had been counted by the crew in the last couple of
minutes."

Speeding from behind was a 45' dhow, which ignored radio
contact and rapidly outran the 'Longo Bardo'. The dhow was firing mortar rounds into the
sea around the Australian, which he admits "was absolutely terrifying."

By the time the dhow pulled alongside, and 15 armed men
were counted on its deck, the 'Longo Bardo' had a response to its mayday calls. A large
cargo ship was steaming in their direction at full speed and had radioed a Canadian
warship also travelling in the area. But they were still two hours away. "At that
stage the skipper decided to put out some goods, cigarettes and alcohol in fairly
conspicuous places, and we hid our valuables and left some money rolled up in case we
needed to bribe them."

"Then the pirates got alongside and we tried to waste
some time on deck, busying ourselves so that we'd have to turn into the wind and take down
the mainsail. Then two of them started getting very aggressive and made moves to jump on
board. One of them pulled out what looked to be a .45 revolver and started waving it in
our direction. We said 'No, no, don't shoot, we're just gonna take the sail down and we
can't stop'. They didn't seem happy with this but they pulled off a fraction and we made
like we were going to take the mainsail down."

Then, by incredible luck, the pirates spotted the cargo
ship on the horizon, steaming to answer the mayday call. They pulled out and circled in
the area until the Canadian warship arrived half an hour later. Flannery and the others
were safe.

"It was a terrifying experience," he says, in a
voice both jaunty and half-incredulous. "All aboard were considerably shaken. There
were only seven of us and 15 of them. We feared for our lives. The money or whatever
didn't matter to us. We feared that if the cargo ship had left, the pirates would have
become very upset and done something..."

Others have not been so lucky. Two years ago, two young
crewmen and an elderly American couple were bound, gagged, savagely beaten and shot aboard
the yacht 'Computacenter Challenger', near Antigua in the West Indies. There are some
3,000 attacks+ on yachts and small boats every year - and none of these are even recorded
as piracy.

Eric Ellen says that the figures are still "under
control", but the lack of official concern from governments is "very
worrying." Moreover, few crews are trained to deal with a pirate attack and fewer
still travel under respected flags. Many ships are actually registered under 'flags of
convenience'. It is often cheaper and relatively easy to register a ship in Panama or
Liberia, with fewer safety and training restrictions, than in the UK or another developed
country. But according to Ellen: "Your flag is your only protection out there - and
Panama doesn't mean much to a pirate." Furthermore, countries such as Panama don't
have the resources to pursue detailed piracy investigations.

"We're light years behind the aviation industry,"
Ellen admits sadly. "The problem is still there and the pirates have not
disappeared," he reflects. "There is unseen danger and it could come back in a
big way, at any time. But I won't be fobbed off."